Tjin Lee

jin Lee is managing director and founder of the award-winning Mercury Group of companies which she founded in 2001. Mercury Group specializes in fashion, lifestyle and luxury industries and comprises Mercury Events, Mercury PR, Mercury Creative and Mercury Marketing & Communications. Tjin started her career in fashion and luxury lifestyle as part of the marketing team of Club 21, Singapore’s leading fashion retailer. Since then, she has proven her passion for fashion by establishing Audi Fashion Festival from 2009 to 2014, bringing in shows by international designers including Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix, Roberto Cavalli, Carolina Herrera, Zac Posen, Prabal Gurung and Oscar de la Renta. In 2015, the festival was renamed Singapore Fashion Week, Singapore’s premier fashion event, bringing with it more industry-wide relevance to fashion in Singapore. Most recently, she was the chairman for Singapore Fashion Week 2017. A passionate entrepreneur, Tjin boasts directorship in nine local businesses, including Trehaus Co-work, Curated Editions, Baby Style Icon and Wolfgang Violin Studio. She was also the recipient of the inaugural Singapore Tatler Young Achiever Leadership Award (2010) and featured on Singapore Tatler’s 300 list (2018). Tjin co-founded CRIB in 2014, Singapore’s first business and lifestyle incubator targeted at women. The social enterprise aims to empower and encourage women from all walks of life to create successful, responsible and innovative businesses through networking, matchmaking and business incubation – all this while maximising the elusive goal of achieving a fulfilling work-life balance. Tjin also developed the social enterprise’s proprietary ABC Entrepreneur Profile matching tool. This matching tool helps identify an individual’s entrepreneurial strengths, before pairing them up with potential business ideas and partners. The assessment tool is based upon the belief that every successful founding team comprises of three entrepreneur types: Angel Investors (A), Business Managers (B) and Creatives (C). Most recently, Tjin together with a group of parents, founded Life Beyond Grades, a movement that hopes to bring about awareness of the rising depression and suicide rates among the youth in Singapore, as well as the immense academic pressure kids face in school.